Goals

Scope 1 - User and technical requirement elicitation and validation: This activity will be driven by the railway companies to ensure that the focus of research is on methods that can achieve a step change in addressing capacity problems in the real-world. In the latter stages of the ON-TIME project, the requirements will be used to form an agreed specification that can be disseminated to the wider supply industry (addressed by WP1 and WP2).

Scope 2 - Development of robust and resilient timetables: This activity will develop further methods for the creation of robust and resilient timetables. The former are timetables that are able to cope with statistical variations that occur every day, while the latter are designed to be easily recoverable in the event of incidents or disturbances (addressed by WP3).

Scope 3 - Methods for real-time management of operations: This activity will develop further methods for automatic conflict detection, prediction and resolution, in real-time, from minor and medium term perturbations in order to recover operations to the timetable and to improve traffic fluidity (addressed by WP4).

Scope 4 - Decision support for disposition: This activity will consider appropriate actions in the case of large scale disturbance. In such instances it is necessary to consider the wider system to ensure that not only trains return to the specified timetable, but that staff, resources, rolling stock and train paths are in place to provide the necessary service capability. Due to the multi-faceted nature of such problems it is not considered appropriate to automate control in such cases. Instead, decision support systems will be developed that are able to advise train controllers, infrastructure managers and operators (addressed by WP5).

Scope 5 - Driving advisory systems: This activity will focus on ensuring that decisions and strategies are communicated effectively and automatically to human controllers (drivers, traffic management personnel). The work area will consider the requirements for data communication and human factors issues (addressed by WP6).

Scope 6 - Process and information architecture: This activity will focus on the research into and development of a standardised data model and service oriented architecture for the exchange of contextualised data and collaborative problem solving among railway undertakings (addressed by WP7).

Scope 7 - Demonstration: Throughout the ON-TIME project the focus will be on taking the best of existing academic research and practical application to develop best practice processes and methods that can be used throughout Europe. Where necessary, new approaches will be developed and integrated to form a systems solution. The results of the project will be demonstrated on three example real-world case studies, which will be supported by one of the railway undertakings taking part in the consortium (addressed by WP8).